


A Crown Story

by PrinceOfOneSingleDomain



Category: Adventure Time, The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Paranormal, Post-Apocalypse, Vampires, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24978829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain/pseuds/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain
Summary: Joel sometimes leaned back and remembered their meeting with the young pale girl, her skin almost grey, and the old man protecting her - wielding a crown that turned the Clickers and Runners into solid ice that toppled over and burst into a thousand tiny pieces. It reminded him of a story he had never told Ellie. And he never would.In a world without Joel, Ellie will have to face just how far she's willing to go to get back all she's lost.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us), Ellie & Marceline, Ellie & Tommy (The Last of Us), Ice King | Simon Petrikov & Marceline
Comments: 15
Kudos: 25





	1. Prolgue: A Pal and a Confidant, Reprise

**Author's Note:**

> So, here we are. It's been two years since I wrote "A Pal and A Confidant", something this can basically be considered a sequel to since they're both canon in this universe. The only change, perhaps, being that Marceline is a bit older in "A Pal and A Confidant" than she is in "Simon & Marcy". 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this as far as I take it. I sure do enjoy writing it.

They were sitting in her house, Joel had brought a cheesy boxer movie from the 70s he said was a “bona fide masterpiece, and if you don’t agree by the end, we might have to part ways for real this time.”

“As if.”

“Well, I’m just sayin’.”

“And I’m saying – as if you’d ever leave. You like me too much.”

“Now where did you get that? Did Tommy get that mush into your head?”

“Nah, it’s obvious. It’s, like, all over the place.”

“You better watch what you’re saying, kiddo, because I’m not gonna bring you anymore movies otherwise. And you can have your pick. Remind me – how many movies do you know that I haven’t shown you?”

“Like, three.”

“See.”

“Ah, shut it. Get that thing rolling.”

They watched it, and there was this scene where the boxer was running up these stairs to that building, and it stirred something deep within Ellie. That feeling of having made it. That feeling of being fine, of reaching the place where you wanted to get. She leaned against Joel and he put his arm around her shoulder. He’d just started doing that at some point, and it felt the closest to unconditional love Ellie had ever experienced. She never knew her father, he either ran off to join the Fireflies himself or simply disappeared the way many people did.

She whispered something to Joel. He whispered back. They did that sometimes. It was their own little world, private, a world where Henry and Sam and Tess sometimes walked through the door only to leave too soon. She told him so much more about Riley than she ever expected to, too. He knew her.

When the movie ended, Joel shot her a glance filled with meaning and anticipation.

She waited. She knew he hated it when she waited and she loved him hating it because then they could both laugh about it.

“So?”, he finally said.

“It’s not bad.”

“Oh, so it’s not bad.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said. Not bad.”

“I uh, you know. Might’ve been a mirage. But I saw you cry.”

“Did not!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure you did. But, you know, I’m not judging.”

“Yeah, I mean, you cried during – during Little Miss Sunshine.”

“I guess I did, yeah.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s good to have family.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

She got up to grab some snacks, but on the way back, she noticed the trinkets and memorabilia she’d spread around the room and the shelves. The old comic books Joel found on their journey, the robot she’d grabbed for Sam, the button she kept from Marceline’s toy. She grabbed it. The toy – Hambo – had been somewhat red, somewhat grey, its colour faded after many hours of travelling. During their meeting with them, it had lost an eye – the very button Ellie was holding onto now. A memory: her and Marceline laughing before the infected came. Joel shooting at the Crown while Simon collected collected dank ice energy in his hands. The frail man falling towards the snow below. She threw the button to Joel. He caught it.

“What’s this?”

“Remember, in the university? Back when we thought the Fireflies would be there?”

She noticed the same heaviness that always descended over him whenever she mentioned the Fireflies, be it while talking to Tommy, in passing or in a direct question she’d ask Joel himself. Those were becoming more frequent.

“Yeah”, he then said, “I do. What about it?”

“Remember those guys we met? Marceline, the girl, and that guy she was travelling with …”

“Simon?”

“Simon. That's right.”

She sat down next to him.

“If I remember it right”, he said, “he had – he had freezing powers.”

“Yeah. I haven’t told anyone about that. They’d say we’re crazy.”

“I mean, we probably are. I chalked it up to hallucination for a long time.”

“Then who helped us kill the clickers?”

“Exactly.”

He returned the button to Ellie. She took it slowly, feeling its texture as she did with all the things in her room whenever the mood struck her. It was her life, spread out around here. She never imagined she’d ever have a home to do something like this in – it felt ancient and alien, as if she were one of those people who had spent their time reconstructing the way pioneers or Native Americans lived hundreds of years ago.

“What do you think happened to them?”

“Best not to dwell on it, Ellie.”

“Do you think she got bit?”

“I said – I said it’s best not to dwell on it.”

“Simon was going crazy.”

“Yes. He was.”

“You told me they’d be fine.”

“What else was I supposed to say? I wanted to believe they would. I like to think I still do.”

“Have you ever lied to me, Joel?”

He stiffened up. “What’s this about?”

“Joel, have you ever lied to me? About anything?”

“Yes.”

She waited with bated breath. Hambo’s eye would’ve been crushed in her hand if it were made out of any material other than what buttons were usually made of. But just before she thought Joel would spill the beans – or actually reveal anything of substance – he broke into a small smile, and it was both hard and easy to hide her disappointment behind a real wave of relief, quickly followed by the queasy feeling of something being off.

“I took that last beer”, he said, “and I told you it was Tommy. I’m sorry.”

“Joel, that’s not what I meant.”

“Well, then I’m out”, he said. “We better get some rest. It’s late.”

“Wait.”

She spent some time recounting the event when they’d met Simon and Marceline – the clickers, the runners, how good talking to the girl had felt, the gun Joel had given to Simon. Whether he ever used it. Whether it really was the Crown making him go insane. All the while, she mentioned their travels – she weaved the Fireflies into her story at as many turns as she could, waiting for Joel’s reaction. She saw him trying not to react at all, but it was a “trying”. Had it always been there? Was she interpreting something into his facial expressions that wasn’t actually there? She wondered.

Joel went home, she went to sleep. Or to “let’s roll around in bed for a while”, as she sometimes called it.

The next night, she took off to the hospital. And that was that.


	2. The chapter with the spilled beer

_“Joel would be halfway to Seattle right now.”_

_“Yeah, but he wouldn’t want you to be like him, now would he?”_

It was time that did her in. They told her time would come heal it all eventually. That it would make things better. Safer. More removed. That it would come up to her bed and give her a warm hug on a lonely night.

But Joel was dead, and he was only deader every day.

It started with a couple of beers more than usual. Dina had been glad that Ellie had actually consumed something of her own volition, something she didn’t have to beg her to eat. But then it started feeling like Ellie was the sole user of their small brewery. There weren’t enough hours in the day to drink as much as she eventually did, and she felt the weeks slip away, escape down the line of visits to the toilet and the cool basement where they kept beer. There was no whisky, or else she would’ve drunk it, too. It felt good to be numb. When she could get weed, she got that. In the end, she looked a lot like one of those slackers she watched on TV, and it made sense, because nothing made sense anymore.

Their last conversation. His face. Please stop.

But one of the kids from across Jackson was brewing up vodka. Joel had told her about vodka. She drank.

But the worst things weren’t the drinks, not to her. She was young, she had never drunk much in her life before, she could handle it, and she didn’t go all glug glug on a bottle. It was the time in between. The horrifying, screaming, begging hours in-between.

_Please stop._

_Joel. Get up, Joel._

_Please. Please stop._

_I’ll fucking kill you._

And nothing had come of that, had it.

Whenever she felt the memory come up, she felt her entire body reacting. It was as if it was deciding to start up its gears, to prepare for a fight, only to then give up pathetically. Her face mushed in.

The golf club.

The fucking golf club.

She cried when she didn’t think anyone could hear, and sometimes so loudly she was sure they did. All had made some attempts to reach out to her, only to be rejected, rebuked, made to leave or listened to half-heartedly. Jesse and Dina would be busy raising their baby soon, and Tommy and Maria seemed to have “adopted” a couple of the rowdy kids who usually jumped around, so it was quiet. She wondered whether anything would have changed if she’d set out. They would have followed her, and half of them would have died, but it could have been worth it, right? She imagined Abby’s skull cracking in her fingers. Her eyes falling out. She imagined torture. For a long time. She imagined it in all colours of the rainbow – how she’d force Abby to kill her friends, how she’d slowly mess up her body in a way that would keep her from bleeding out for a s long as possible. It kept her going.

She looked at herself in the mirror, and she didn’t recognise herself anymore. She expected the girl from five or six years ago to appear in there, the one she was before Riley died, or just after, or during. It seemed so long ago now. The memory of their kiss was as faded as the one with Dina. Dina hadn’t wanted to get back together with Jesse, she’d wanted to raise the child together with Ellie, that she knew. There was something both spoken and unspoken between them, even now, when she came to visit. Ellie knew she’d leave Jesse in a heartbeat if she asked her to. But no. She was a shell of her former self with no reason in mind as to why that should change.

“We want to send you back out on patrols,” Maria said.

Ellie shrugged. “Think there’s any good that’ll do?”

“You need to get out. Vent some of that anger.”

“I’ll just kill myself.”

“Ellie.”

“It’s true. Suicide by Clicker is what that’s called.”

“Then you stay here.”

“I will.”

She started missing the sound of gunfire. She awoke one night to some kid who’d stolen a gun shooting it somewhere around Jackson. As she got up to see what the ensuing commotion was about, she saw Tommy waving it in the air, pointing it this way and that – safety on, of course – and quickly putting it away.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The boy shrugged, staring down. “They made me do it.”

“They made you do what? Nobody can make you do anything.”

“They said they’d tell.”

“Now all of Jackson knows anyway! Because they’re all here! You’re wasting ammo. You’re wasting time. People were supposed to get a restful night’s sleep to go out for the patrols. People feared for their lives thinking somebody had made it behind the gates, killed our watch, do you understand that?”

He was crying by now, full-on bawling. “I’m sorry, Tommy, please, I’m sorry.”

“Look at all those people you woke up. Look! There’s Maria, there’s our cook who was supposed to make breakfast in the cantina in three hours, look there’s – “

He saw Ellie. Their eyes locked. The same pain. Maria had convinced them it was stupid to go. That the fact that Joel that would’ve gone didn’t make it right, that Joel was fallible, able to make mistakes just as the rest of them were. That he’d made plenty of them in his time. Now they were standing here, Ellie hadn’t showered in a week and Tommy was yelling up a storm about a boy who’d probably just grabbed his father’s gun to look at it, had his friends knock at his door and ran outside. Or maybe they’d stolen it, shot it, passed it to him at the last moment so he’d get caught.

Anyway, Ellie shouldn’t be losing sleep over this.

“Ellie”, Tommy said.

She nodded. “Tommy. We oughta go to bed.”

Tommy turned to look at the boy one more time. “Let this be a lesson. I don’t ever wanna see you touching a gun again.”

“Yeah.”

“Unless it’s for self-defense.”

“Yes, sir.”

The crowd slowly dispersed, with most of them throwing sideway glances at Ellie. They hadn’t seen her in a while, and her hair was uncharacteristically long, greasy. Her skin had gotten worse, and she was pale as moonstone, though that probably hadn’t changed all that much. They’d expected her to become psychotic as soon as they heard that Joel died, what had happened to him, but instead she’d drawn into herself, closed herself off to the world. She knew that no amount of bloodshed would ever bring him back, that was clear, and she couldn’t help it – after finding out that he’d stopped her life from ever having any meaning outside of living to breathe, eat and shit another day, her heart was confused. She loved him. She missed him. Had she forgiven him?

Better not think about it. Better come home, close the door. Think of killing Abby. Imagine it. Remember Maria – “he wouldn’t want you to be like him, anyway, now would he?” Try to forget. Sit down. Hear somebody knock.

“Hey Ellie, it’s me”, Tommy said. “Let me in, please.”

“Alright, alright. Come in. Gimme a sec.”

“Yeah.”

She shuffled some of her clothes around, though they were too strewn about to really do anything. With a sigh, she opened the door.

“Ellie, I – good God. What’s that smell?”

“I spilled some beer.”

“And you didn’t even clean it up?”

“Why bother? I get used to it.”

“Goddammit.”

Tommy walked through the jungle of her clothes, her underwear, her everything, glanced at the dusty guitar in the corner and grabbed some paper towels off the stove. He doused them in water.

“Where is it?”

“Please don’t.”

“Where the fuck is it? Come on.”

“Like, there. Behind the couch.”

Tommy got to work. He cleaned with a feverish intensity, as if he had to get through the floor to some unspoken truth.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Somebody has to.”

“Clean up after me?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me chase Abby.”

“Ellie…”

“Let me… please, just – I don’t – fuck. I’ve been sitting around here for months. For months, Tommy. I can’t do it. He’s a rotting corpse in there, and they’re still free, walking around.”

“Then why didn’t you leave yet?”

Ellie shut up. For a while, the only sound were quiet steps outside, the people keeping watch. And Tommy still cleaning the floor.

“I want him back”, Ellie said. “That’s all I want.”

“Well, we can’t get him back. And so now you wanna die too?”

“What?”

“I’m asking you. Do you want to die?”

Ellie didn’t answer. Tommy got up, patted down his now-dusty pants and looked at her. That was enough to know.

“Patrol with me”, he said. “Let’s go out. You need to see something other than these four walls. And I’m sick and tired of feeding you and getting you your fucking beer if all you’re gonna do is slowly die anyways.”

“Don’t lecture me. We could’ve been to Seattle and back five or six times by now.”

“You know we couldn’t do that.”

“Maria said we can’t.”

“Ellie.”

“Think Joel would’ve let her give him so much lip? He would’ve gone no matter what.”

“I’m not Joel. And you’re not Joel. Joel was Joel. And you ain’t gotta act like he was some sort of ideal we should all strive towards.”

“He was a good man.”

“You knew him as a good man, Ellie, but – do you really wanna know?”

Ellie was taken aback. She made a step forward. “Know what?”

“Some of the shit we did. I reckon there’s a small story I should tell you. But I can’t do it in here, it smells like shit. Let’s go outside.”

“I was about to go to bed, actually.”

“Yeah, I bet you were. Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The vodka, Ellie.”

“… cupboard.”

“This one?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you. I’ll need some of that.”

They went outside. It was cool, but nothing like the week when Joel was killed, no heavy snowfall. Just the eternal cool of the night before summer, with its fresh air and the hum of insects somewhere far away. Whenever she looked at the stars, she couldn’t help but wonder what was out there – whether there was a world where people, or whatever they called themselves, lived in something approximating peace, where they could take their kids to the space-movies or have an ice cream they didn’t find in an overstuffed cellar, the house above it overrun by infected. She wondered.

They reached a makeshift bench made by stitching wooden somethings together. Tommy sat down, and it creaked uninvitingly.

“Go on.”

Ellie sat down. Tommy opened the vodka bottle and took a swig. His face soured.

“Goddammit, this sucks.”

And he started talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter, we dive into Tommy's and Joel's past as hunters. Stay tuned.


	3. The chapter with Jakey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Tommy have an encounter of the cold kind while part of a group of hunters.

It was just when we joined the hunters, once we couldn’t take any more of doing it on our own. They were a bad crowd, and we knew that from the start, but we sorta felt like we could just fall through the cracks. Have the place to sleep, the people to shoot infected for us, and not do any of the dirty work. But that’s what they make you do when you start – the dirty work. And it only gets dirtier. First we got the corpses, stripped them of possessions, clothes and their fuckin’ dignity. There were kids there. I let Joel sit those ones out. He would usually grab an old paper or something and sit in the corner, shaking. But those guys – when night fell and we all just sort of sat around, things were fine. Or at least as fine as they could be. We would pass around some weed or alcohol, depending on what we found – growing weed was easy now, nobody there to ban it. We’d get high as fuck and roll out of our dirty mattresses in the morning, you know. There was this one guy, we called him Jakey though his name was Harold, because he had like this one large hoodie with JAKE written on the back. And he would always go “Another day of killin’ and lootin’, fellas, livin’ the dream.” Every morning. Like a rooster.

At first, I wanted to kill him in his sleep. Being honest, when Joel and I looked at the stuff these other guys were bringin’ in, all the corpses, we started making plans how to slice his throat, or shoot him when nobody’s looking, though they didn’t even give us weapons yet. You had to do something for the group so they’d give you a gun, and they take yours once you join. They bind you to them. Joel and I both had our baseball bats, and he kept a small revolver hidden in a place that’s not as bad as you think but you probably wouldn’t wanna know the details about. So yeah, Jakey. Then, one day, we see him cryin’, standin’ outside on the balcony. It was sleeping time, so we thought – what’s up with him? Maybe we can push him off or something. But honestly, curiosity got the better of us. ‘Twas night, I remember.

“Somethin’ bugging you, Jakey?”, Joel asked him.

Jakey didn’t even turn around.

“How long you think you gonna do this?”, he asked.

We looked at each other.

“As long as we need”, Joel said. “Long as it takes.” I usually let him talk. I felt like if I started talking, I’d always reveal too much. He had a better grip on what was right to do. As if he were born for this life. He didn’t like me saying it, but he was a natural at surviving. He didn’t like it because it didn’t just mean being good at scrounging up food and finding ammo to fight infected. But it was – whatever.

“And how long will that be?”, Jakey said then. “Because I can’t take it.”

He’d gone up to kill himself. Don’t even freeze, it’s just what you did back then, Ellie.

We talked some sense into him, stuff we ourselves needed to hear. Joel always had a speech ready about having something worth fighting for. I did my usual shtick of saying we’re doing what we have to so we might, at some point, not have to live like this anymore. It’s why I joined the Fireflies later.

And Jakey, you know, he said – “Is ice-cold beer something worth fighting for?”

We didn’t even know what to say. We said, sure. If you can find a working fridge. He smiled. All mischievous. You didn’t see anyone smile like that anymore.

Next day, we got to go out for the first time. Jakey had put in a word for us, and we had two guns and a baseball bat between the three of us. Joel gave me the gun, because that’s how he was. We walked through the city, prayed to God there wouldn’t be any tourists. Finally, we reached a building that just felt off. Jakey told us nobody knew it was there, or, well, what was inside it. Soon as we walked in, it became clear this was no ordinary place. It felt cold. I could see my breath hang in the air. There were scribblings on the wall – **_Golb_** is a word I remember, and _Chaos_ , and _Frenzy_ , and _The Crown Took My Princess._ Ultimately, people started scribbling all sorts of shit on all surfaces, but this – it was a madman. And then we reached the basement. Jakey opened the door as if we were walking into some sort of five-star suite. Inside – frozen. All frozen.

Clickers frozen to walls. Walls covered in ice. A bloater, dead, in the middle of the room, with an ice spike basically growing out of its chest. It was the weirdest thing. We didn’t know if there were spores in the air, so Jakey and Joel wore their gas masks and I stood upstairs, guarding the door. They came up with two days’ looting worth of supplies and three cans of Heineken. They’d been in some sort of container, so they weren’t even all the way frozen. They were nice. Still tasted weird as heck. They’re not supposed to be stored that long, anyway, but this was, what, four or five years after the outbreak, when the first zones were bombed, abandoned and taken over by hunters.

We kept coming back the next days. The others were patting us on the back, asking where we got all the good stuff and where the corpses were, but we just said we found people’s hideouts, cleaned them out, brought back stuff. People started growing suspicious, but when Jakey started sharing his supplies with the others, they shut up quick, at least most of them. There was always a danger of mutiny with these people.

Whenever we would go, we would talk. Jakey – Jakey was the first person Joel told about Sarah. We sat upstairs in that godforsaken building, sipping our beers, and it just came out. I had a girlfriend before, she died. Jakey had a grandmother he’d been taken care of, had to leave her once the military started rounding everybody up. Old people. That’s who you didn’t see anymore, old people and kids. And Jakey told us a story.

It was his first day as a real hunter. With a gun. Out huntin’ tourists. And a couple came by. They saw him, he saw them, they were both looting a building. The guy, didn’t even have a weapon, but he charged Jakey. And Jakey shot his jaw off. Dude landed, and the entire business of his face was falling apart. He was clutching at it, as if he thought it might still be there, Jakey said. Jakey didn’t know what to do, the woman was screaming, so he grabbed her, grabbed her mouth shut, and shot the dude in the face. Died. His hunter pals called up, Yo, there somebody there? And Jakey shouted down No, one dude, shot him. They said – we’re coming up. So now, you see, Jakey has a problem. He’s got this gal there he doesn’t want to kill, he’s got the other hunters comin’ up. So he tells her You shut the fuck up now, you go into the closet, and if you make a peep we’re gonna fucking kill you. I thought, when he was telling me this, that she was gonna be his sex slave or something. That he couldn’t be doing this for a good reason. But she gets into the closet anyway. Just when the hunter pals come up, Jakey closes it. Why? Because that way it looks like he just checked it for supplies. She’s quiet, they start leaving. Jakey waits for them to leave, tells ‘em he has to take a leak. Don’t piss on the dude, they say, it’s disgusting. And they laugh. He laughs too, because he can hear that woman sobbing in the closet, so he needs something to cover the sound.

Jesus, this vodka is crap.

So, once they’re gone, he opens the door. Get the fuck out of here, and don’t show your face ever again. That’s what he says. And she just nods and crawls to her boyfriend or husband, and he gets the hell out of there.

Joel and I just sat there, stunned. Here was this guy we were ready to gut at a moment’s notice, a hunter, piece of shit, you know, the works, and he did something so selfless and dangerous and just downright stupid at a time when he didn’t have to. I loved him then. I loved him at that moment. Joel did, too. He said “If there were more people like you, we’d all be dead. And we’d be better off.”

So what did Jakey do? He laughed. His laugh was sorta pure at that moment, like a kid’s. He must’ve been like eight or ten when all hell broke loose. “You know”, he said, “I’m rather fond of you too. I’m just better at communicating my feelings. But don’t tell the others. They can’t even spell communicate.”

We laughed. For the first time in what, years. Felt good. Felt like there was something worth fighting for, these moments, something to hold on to. I could just imagine us being coworkers before everything, sitting around, sharing a beer after a tough day at work.

We walked out. A shot. Jakey’s head exploded.

There was a group of survivors holed up somewhere. Out of cover, we could see a rifle being brought back inside a window, and we were sure they were there. And they wouldn’t be smart enough to move, because what they’d just done was dumb. In cover, waiting for enough time to pass they would either send somebody after us or forget about us, with Jakey’s blood pooling at our feet, we added two and two together. They wanted him. Just him. Or else we would either be shot at, lured out, or attacked by scouts. Maybe it was just one person. So, without a word, we got out, snuck around, found the building another way, quietly made our way up and found’em. They were loungin’. Apparently happy about what they’d done. The one with the rifle was a woman. I got all reason to believe it was that woman. At first, when we got up, we thought we’d kill just the shooter, but there were other people around. Relaxing. Peaceful. As soon as we noticed, Joel and I got a bit hesitant. We hadn’t killed a single person in the hunters yet. But if we came back without Jakey – that laugh still echoed in my head – they’d ask us what happened. And we’d tell ‘em.

So we killed them. Killed them all. Pulled the trigger again and again, until we did them dead. We said we’d never speak of Jakey or any of this again, but Joel’s dead and you needed to hear this, so I guess it’s all the same. We stayed with the hunters for two years. There was nobody else like Jakey. Not ever. But sometimes, I see these people relaxing. They weren’t hunters. The woman – and I do think it was the closet-girl – got hers. And we got ours. But nothing got got. Just sleepless nights and meaningless days. Until – well, until I came to Jackson and Joel found you. So there’s that.


	4. Hierophant

Tommy took a look at the vodka bottle. They’d shared parts of it, but at the end, it was just him taking ever-smaller swigs. There was a little left.

“This one’s for Jakey”, he said. “Crazy fucker.”

He drank. Then he passed it to Ellie, and she drank too.

“Why did you tell me all this?”, she asked, though she knew the answer. And Tommy knew she knew. He looked at her sternly, his eyes slightly watery either from being tired, the vodka, the story he’d told or all things put together. Ellie sighed. “If you think this will somehow make me happier or something, think again.”

“It’s not about makin’ you happy, Ellie”, he said, “it’s about sucking it up.”

“So they just get away with it?”

“Yes. That’s what they do. Because at some point, somebody’s gonna kill them, or a clicker will bite one of theirs without him or her telling the rest, and they will all turn quicker than a hospital back when it all started. That’s how things work. And nothing can ever bring Joel back.”

“But-“

“Nothing. He’s dead. He’s buried.”

She saw tears in his eyes. It was weird. And more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him.

“So we can either build something together”, he said, “or try to tear something down that will probably collapse all on its own.”

She looked him in the eye. It reminded her of a moment much like this, one where she could make a decision. She made it.

“Okay.”

Tommy came by every day to help Ellie clean her room. She reached out to Dina and they took a long walk. Jesse was fine with them being what they were. They had decided on a bit of an open relationship – they wouldn’t talk too much about it, but Ellie was sure, from the vibes, that Jesse had somebody else as well. In a way, she understood. If she were more stable, maybe she'd feel like sharing Dina with anyone would be the last of days, death, an ending to everything. But now, it felt fine. It meant that she and Dina could spend as much time together as they wanted, and that was fine. They kissed. Like there weren’t these months in between. When she held Dina’s belly, the feeling was incredible. Magic. A life. Annoying, as Dina put it, and always hungry, but still.

Maybe she’d be immune too. Bit of a freak. Ellie could hope.

It was one of the thoughts that kept her up at night after she’d discovered a bunch of biology books. She’d had to trouble Seth on his personal library once to get more, but he’d obliged, thinking that would finally smooth things over between them for good.

Her immunity must be genetic. So there was a line of people before her that all had that gene to at least some degree, right? Unless it wasn’t her that was special – it was the exact type of mutation of the infection. Weird and crazy. Damn, nature.

It took a while, and training, and cutting down on beer and even a little on self-pity, but ultimately they let Ellie back in the saddle – she promised Tommy she wouldn’t suicide by Clicker, had to promise it multiple times until her annoyance revealed at least a small penchant for emotion, one that had been missing before he told her the story. Dina’s belly had grown a little, and it just reminded Ellie how quickly time was passing. That Joel was turning to dust. She tried not to dwell on it, but how could she not? It followed her on sorties, on supply runs, and it followed her all the way to the small suburb she decided to check out with Jesse as the sun was sinking.

The house she was walking into, across from the one Jesse was checking out, had always been there, as far as she was concerned. Its walls were a reminder of the many years that had passed since anyone lived in it. But today, something was different. The curtains were drawn, the blinds were down, and somebody had made damn sure there would be no light in it whatsoever, that it would be a place of eternal night.

Ellie listened. Was there somebody inside? She heard no steps. No breathing. Quietly, she kept her flashlight off and snuck inside through the unlocked door. Inside, she waited until her eyes got used to the darkness. Nothing about the interior had changed – it was the same house it had always been, with the fridge and shelves picked clean. Jesse was checking the one across, the one that had seemed a bit less worn down to Ellie, brighter, less dangerous. She went into this one fully believing there might be something around the corner that would kill her. Or maybe Joel would be there. That’s a thought that didn’t leave her – that, whenever she moved past a corner, he would be there, his guitar in his hand, his entire face covered with blood, smiling at her from a cracked skull.

She stopped feeling nauseous at the thought about a week ago.

Her footsteps creaked on the floor. It was dark. Darker than it had any reason to be, unless the person living here before all this had been a photographer, old-school, taking photos and then developing them in absolute darkness. But didn’t you need red light for that? In movies you did. Ellie turned on her flashlight as soon as the darkness got to be too much.

She heard a sound from above her. Or was it below? She felt as if she’d stepped into a warped place, where sounds didn’t work the way they should. The darkness felt alive. Breathing. It felt more alive than she did, really.

“Yo”, said Jessie. She whirled around, her heartrate at what felt like an all-time high for a moment. He was standing there, leaning against the walls in a relaxed manner. “What’s up?”

“Are you trying to scare me in here?”

“Not really”, he said, “just thought you might, you know, need some help or something.”

“Are you done with your building?”

“Sure.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Uh, just the usual supplies.”

“Like what?”

“Like, some bullets and some food, I guess. I think we’ll find some more here. Looks like nobody’s been here in forever. All the doors are closed.”

This was not the way Jessie talked. Something felt off, but Ellie couldn’t place it. It was him, looking out her from beneath the light of her flashlight, but still. Then again, he was right. The house seemed empty, with no occupants who had even taken shelter here, no infected, all doors closed.

Who had closed the doors?

“That’s weird”, Ellie said, subconsciously following Jesse somewhere.

“What is?”, Jesse said. Was there an edge in his voice?

“All of this. I feel like this house has a way different vibe than the others. And about the doors being closed, who closed them? Usually you never see doors where all the doors are closed off. People left in a hurry. Or the military bombings did something to make the doors open. There were earthquakes, I think. And people coming through, raiders. The entire country is raided.”

“Crazy”, Jesse said. “But do you still think we should take a look at the basement?”

“The basement?”

“There might be some stuff there. I mean, there usually is, right?”

“Right. I guess. Might get some skeletons of some people who locked themselves in thinking coming out would be safe soon.”

“Ew. We’ll see.”

It was the “ew” that tipped her over.

“Did Dina leave you?”

“We- what?”

Jesse stood before the door to the basement, below Ellie on the stairs leading down to it.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you two doing okay?”

“Yeah, it’s, uh, smooth sailing.”

“Fuck, I’m glad. Because – I wouldn’t want that one time with Dina and me to stand between us. I really appreciate you taking me along with the way I’ve been acting lately. I can’t help it, you know?”

“Uh, sure.”

“With Joel gone – I still can’t talk about it.”

Jesse opened the door to the basement. There were candles in it, but none were lit. He let Ellie walk in first, and she immediately noticed a strange shape in the room’s middle. Walking closer, her flashlight which was, as always, attached to her coat, illuminated a small ornate coffin whose top had been removed and was lying on the ground. It looked fresh. There was no dust on it.

“What’s going on here?”, Ellie said.

She turned around to see Jesse closing the door.

“Jesse?”

“Now, I feed.”

Jesse turned around. Only he was smaller, and thicker, and one of his arms was quickly growing towards Ellie. Ellie leapt back and pulled her gun.

“Who the fuck are you?”, she shouted as the arm narrowly missed her and hit the coffin like an arrow.

“I’m hungry”, the growing pain said, “and I’ll need some of your blood to fill me up good.”

Ellie shot. The bullets seemed to pass through, she even heard them hitting the door behind it.

“And now you sit down!”, it said. It stretched its arm in a way that made escape impossible, especially as Ellie noticed the other one coming in from its side. She felt herself grabbed by hands that could crush her at any moment, that could throw her around the room. She’d never felt this way. In an attempt to do something, she dropped her gun and tried to get her knife, but it was no use – her arms were firmly pressed to her sides, and the arms kept wrapping around her like vines on a tree.

“Struggle”, it said, approaching her, only its eyes visible in the dark beneath Ellie’s flashlight, which it had pointed at the ceiling, “and you will taste better. The blood will circulate through your veins quicker. I will merely bite and feel it pulse into me with your heartbeat.”

“I’ll kill you”, Ellie said, her bones creaking, “I’ll tear out your tongue and feed it to you, you piece of shit.”

“Ah, feisty.”

“What – are you? 300… years old?”

“Just about.”

“Huh. You sure sm-smell like it. Ow, damn.”

“You remind me of another plappermouth, but she isn’t here. So I’ve got you all to myself.”

It pulled her closer. Her flashlight illuminated a moustached face, incredibly old, ears sharp and long, with a goatee of ancient, thick hair framing bones. Ellie would’ve felt weird being held by a middle-aged men like this even if he didn’t have massive fangs growing from his mouth, but he did, and she saw their jagged shape, the small bits missing, the incredibly sharp edges. Some cannibal with sharp teeth, she thought. Or a real fucking vampire.

Yeah. No.

For a moment, the coffin flashed in her mind.

“Will you move your neck willingly?”, he asked.

Ellie spit in his face.

“Piss off.”

“Alright”, he said, “your choice, girl.”

Another hand grew out of his hands and grabbed her by the hair. She screamed as he moved her head to free her neck. With an incredibly sharp pain, the teeth went in. And went out immediately. The man looked her up and down.

“What?”, he asked.

Ellie couldn’t say anything else but “What?”, in return.

He bit her hand. He bit through her hand, actually. The pain was immense. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. But before the pain could grow truly immense, he pulled out his teeth again and started throwing up dust on the floor. The arms let her go.

She fell down, clutched at her hand. It was fixable, but it hurt like hell. She crawled away until her back was up against the wall, then she moved her flashlight to look at him.

“What’s wrong?”, she said, “can’t handle the grit?”

“I hate mushrooms!”, the man managed to see between bouts of nausea.

“Mushrooms?”

“You’re infected! Why didn’t you tell me you were infected?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d mind, you know. Though somebody else stopped eating me for the same reason, so, I guess I could’ve figured.”

“Will you stop talking? I’m in pain over here.”

She would not be eaten. But her hand was still useless, it would barely hold a gun, let alone help her get past Mr. Longteeth.

“You bit my hand, dick”, she said. Then, a thought. Panic. “What did you do to Jessie?”

“Him? He’s fine. He’s probably starting to wonder where you went, so we better make this quick, girl.”

He stood up. Instead of his teeth, his fingernails grew in size. They cast long shadows on the walls, looking like thin sun rays in children’s paintings. Only they were deadly and about to rip her apart.

“You know”, he said, “I bet you know Marceline. And if you do, she’ll be really, really sad when you die. So – let’s leave her a message, if she ever finds you, right? Right on… here.”

He cut open the fabric of her pants to reveal her upper thigh. There was not a scratch on it. An artist, Ellie thought. She hated artists like this. She’d once wandered into the lair of a raider who made puppets of skulls. She didn’t sleep for a week.

“But wait”, he said, as if something ethereal suddenly dawned on him. He got on his knees so they were seeing eye to eye. Ellie smeared her hand on his face. He coughed.

“Disgusting”, he whispered.

“What? Speak up, please.”

He leaned in instead, opting to be the mysterious whisperer. Ellie had enough. If she was going down, she was going down in style. With a roar, she bit into his ear. And let go as soon as it grew spikes. She felt her tongue be pierced, and it wasn’t the kind of tongue piercing Dina had always fantasized about. Her attacker moved back anyway, even though her bite had done damage. Maybe she reeked of mushroom to him. Good.

“You got a plan for everything”, she said, a bit of blood mixing with her saliva. If she kept him talking, maybe Jesse could come. Then again, he better not. “What are you, anyway?”, she asked.

“I’m a vampire”, he said. He grinned. Ellie laughed. But she believed it. The entire weight of their altercation pressed down on her. There was no explanation, so the one he gave had to be right. Maybe he was some mutant, like in one of those Fallout games they found during their last time in Jackson’s suburbs. Maybe he was a vampire. It didn’t matter.

“And one question”, he continued, “though I already knew the answer.” His eyes sparkled. “You two aren’t just moving by yourself, are you? I feel the smell of many, many people on you, girl.”

Oh no.

“We passed through somewhere”, Ellie said.

“I don’t care if you pass through or live there or killed everyone there. As long as there’s fresh blood, I’ll be there.”

He stood up.

“And you stay here”, he said. “Don’t piss yourself from fear once the flashlight runs out, alright?”

“Why? What are you doing?”

“Gonna pay your people a visit. Not before I take care of your friend up there.”

“You fuck!”

“Ah – music to my ears! Goodbye, I’ll be back with your friends! Or, you know. They’ll be here in some form.”

He laughed while closing the door to basement.

“Come back here! Come back! I’ll end you!”, Ellie yelled. She crawled towards the door, trying to avoid her hand touching anything, but the door was firmly locked. How had she not noticed that Jesse had unlocked it with a key? The weird way he’d been speaking? Everything?

She leaned against the door. It was over. She’d messed up, and that was that.

It was cold in the basement, and lonely.

She didn’t know how much time passed before the door opened again.

“You”, she said, “you – I can’t see you. I know you’re there. Come here. Eat me. Just – don’t do anyone else, okay? Just eat me. I’m good for it. I’m sorry.”

A tender hand touched her head and moved to look at her. Touched her neck. It wasn’t him.

“What’s going on?”

In pitch black darkness, two eyes lit up.

“Ellie”, the woman who had just walked in said. “It’s you.”

Matches that blew through the darkness. A candle was lit by long, grey hands. Grey.

Ellie looked up. The face had changed, but the hair was still black, the eyes still small and inquisitive, and she still wore red. It had been so many years ago, but Ellie would never forget anyone she met on her journey with Joel.

“Marceline”, she said. And passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was glad to see that there was at least a small response to this one. It's said that writing for a really small audience can be rewarding, and with this crossover being specific and involved, I hope those who feel at home in both The Last of Us and Adventure Time, especially the lore surrounding Marceline, will get a kick out of this.


	5. Ellie & Marcy

_There was heat, and there were fries, and there was Hudson Abadeer. Much later, when Marceline told the story to the other humans she’d found – she still considered herself to be one, at heart, at the time – she almost felt like she had to be over it. Come on – really? Getting worked up about fries? But after explaining, in great detail, how much she had looked forward to these fire-cooked fries in destroyed LA, how she had already imagined their taste on her mouth, how she had then seen her father, returned from wherever it was he went, she said to obscure his true nature – she was crying. Not openly, not uncontrollably, just crying a bit, here and there._

_She didn’t tell the humans about how her father Hunson had then opened a basement full of Runners and Clickers, only to suck out their souls one by one, offering her to try as well. She declined._

_“The soul inside”, her father had said, flashing a razor-tooth grin, “is still tasty as all heck, Marcy. Gooble it up before it’s gone, grubby!"_

_One of the elders pulled her aside later. To still be able to get worked up about fries, he said, was one of the great gifts of humanity. That those small feelings of betrayal, but also of friendship and kindness, could still elicit these responses was a miracle, comparable only to the fact that even after humanity would be gone, the sun would still rise – that the universe didn’t need humanity’s comprehension to exist._

_Marceline wiped away her tears then. And swore, quietly, when the folks went to do their daily bidding, to protect everything that was left as well as she could._

***  
  


Ellie came to. The darkness of the room dissipated slightly, which meant that it was either still light outside or that day had already broken again, leaving too much time between when it… What was it? She looked at her hand. Bandaged, and dusty in the faint light coming from the single window the basement had. Her eyes adjusted. Her head ached, but was otherwise fine. She felt pins and needles all over her legs. In the corner, a figure.

“You remember me, right?”, it said.

Ellie nodded. “University of Eastern Colorado.”

“What, ten years ago?”

“Feels like it.” She coughed. Her throat was dry as all hell.

“You were travelling with… it was an older guy. John?”

“Joel. And you were with…”

“Simon.”

“And The Crown.”

“Yeah.”

“You were smaller.”

“You were, too.”

“Long ago now. Now, could you get me something to drink or are you watching me die?”

Long black hair, the entire body covered, only the face visible, with a scarf tied around its neck.

Familiar eyes, seen so long ago, on a journey that felt so different from where she now was.

“You’re – your name ain’t…” A fit of coughs. The figure moved towards her slowly, with no intent of hurting. Ellie tried again when it stood just a couple of feet away from her. “It can’t be Marceline, right?” Ellie leaned back against the wall.

The girl shot her a winning smile and leaned down. “The one and only”, she said quietly. She then took a look at Ellie’s neck. “He bit you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah”, Ellie said. “I suppose he did. What is he, anyway?”

“Hierophant. Old vampire.”

“I need a moment.”

“You got it.”

Ellie leaned into the wall, mustered all of her strength and yelled. “Fucking _vampires!”_

“I know”, Marceline said.

With that out of her system, Ellie took a closer look at Marceline. Her skin was still grey, and it seemed to have gotten even greyer ever since their meeting in the University of Eastern Colorado. Her eyes were dark, almost pitch black from a distance, as was her hair – up close. She was thin and lanky, but there seemed to be something about her that, like for a kind man riding on a horse decorated with the skulls of his foes (Conan the Barbarian, as far as Ellie was concerned, was _a boneified master piece),_ seemed to suggest a hidden strength. She had grown substantially taller – she was now even taller than Ellie, even though she had been the smaller of the two. It didn’t make sense, but then again, quite a few things didn’t seem to make sense at all. Vampires. There were vampires. She had read so many books about vampires, now she was in a story with vampires. She was bitten.

Oh fuck.

“Am I – am I gonna turn into him? With a mustache and everything? Is that what happens when you get bitten?”

“Nah”, Marceline said, “not that. But, uh, let’s check if it had an effect, shall we?”

“How?”, Ellie asked. “And what are you doing here? And where’s the old guy, where’s, uh, fuck, where’s Simon? Did you two do okay? Why are touching my hand?”

“To do this.”

Marceline pulled Ellie’s hand into the sunlight.

Ellie screamed. Marceline jumped back.

Ellie’s screaming soon turned into sounds of utter pained laughter.

“I’m kidding, hell, come on!”

“Don’t – are you a jokester?”

“Scuse me?”

“Are you, like, a person who jokes around all the time?”

“I, uh. I – I used to be.”

Ellie shook it off. Joel’s face.

“It’s interesting”, Marceline said then, coming closer to Ellie, “you’re the first person I’ve met that I know this long ever since – well. I’m here for Simon, actually. But, uh, let’s not dwell on that. Can you walk?”

“Lift me up, we’ll see.”

Marceline gave a black-gloved hand to Ellie, who used it and Marceline’s surprising strength to lift herself off the ground. She balanced alright, but as soon as she stood and the blood rushed through her body, she felt a stinging pain, both around her neck and in her hand.

“Fuck”, she said. Succinct.

“Can you walk up?”, Marceline asked.

“Yeah”, Ellie said, “sure.” They walked up slowly, with Ellie using Marceline for a bit of balance while her strength returned.

“What’s your Pyroman doing here?”

Marceline thought for a second whether to correct Ellie, but decided not to. Too fun.

“Pyroman’s on the hunt. He’s hungry, he’s tired, he’s old and he’s ugly.”

“Sure is. Friggin asshole almost bit off my hand.”

“I saw. I tracked him to this lair. And – before we walk out, you should take a look. This is your friend, right?”

She pointed at the couch in the living room while they were walking by. On it, on what looked like a makeshift blood transfusal station, Jessie lay, unconscious.

“Holy fuck”, Ellie said. She rushed to his side. “Jessie? Hey, man, can you hear me? You okay?”

“He’s gonna live”, Marceline said. She took a look at the bag of blood connected to his veins through a weird and slightly unnerving system of valves. “Friend of mine custom-built these for me. For a case like this. Hierophant knows he can’t find too many people.”

“So he sucks them, what, almost dry? So they’re still alive?”

“If he can scrounge up food, he feeds ‘em for a couple of days. So they make more blood.”

“Disgusting. Oddly hospitable. Still disgusting.”

“Uh-hu. Let’s bring him back.”

“Marceline, it’s gonna take forever.”

“I’ll manage if we both, kinda, hold him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can, uh. I can fly now.”

Ellie looked at Marceline. “You can fly.”

“It’s not so weird once you see it.”

“You can fly?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking awesome. Like, I’m obviously concerned for, you know, Jessie lying here after having almost bled to death, but flying is still awesome.”

Marceline blushed a little. It lit up her cheeks. “Uh, thanks. So, uh.”

“Wait”, Ellie said. Her mind was turning itself inside out trying to remember something, something incredibly important that had transpired between her and Lyrofan, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember, until she suddenly did, so hard it hurt.

“He’s headed for Jackson.”

“Where?”

“Jackson. That’s where we live.”

“And it’s almost nightfall.”

“What?”

Ellie looked outside. Stars were glistening in the sky.

“Oh no”, she said, “oh nonono. He’ll – he’ll shapeshift into one of us, and then he’ll – he’ll kill Maria. Or Tommy. Or Dina.”

Jessie stirred in his sleep. In her moment of panic, Ellie allowed herself one thought. _Cute._

“Then we need to get going”, Marceline said. She covered her face with the scarf and pulled a pair of dark glasses from one of the many pockets of her black outfit. With a small sound of heaving, she lifted Jessie, weird cables and blood still attached, up from his chair. He groaned loudly, but his eyes didn’t open. With him on her arms, Marceline walked outside, carefully maneuvering around her corners so he wouldn’t hit his head.

“Hey!”, she called to Ellie, who was walking behind her, somewhat in awe, somewhat jealous of her strength.

“Yeah?”, Ellie said.

Marceline, her long hair flowing in the wind, looked Ellie in the eyes from behind her dark glasses.

“I forgot your name and I’m sorry.”

“Ellie.”

“Good. Grab my shoulders and don’t let go. I can transport two medium-sized people this way.”

Ellie did as she was told. She felt something stir deep inside her as soon as she felt Marceline rising – that the world had suddenly become bigger. It felt like the moment she realised she was immune. There was something in motion.

Far away, Ellie was approaching Jackson, thinking what to tell people when they asked her where Jessie was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one, with some delay! Hope you're enjoying this one so far. Always glad to read whatever comment you might write, and whatever feedback you might have.


	6. Ellie, New and Improved

_The light hummed above Jakey’s head. Tommy noticed him leaning against the wall of the room him and Joel still had, the one they had received once they told the others they’d killed the fuckers who got Jakey. Tommy barely lifts his head. Joel is tossing and turning in restless sleep next to him._

_“Jakey”, he whispered, “what the fuck are you doing here?”_

_Jakey looked right at Tommy. Part of his head was missing. It was just gone – no blood, no nothing, as if somebody had taken a bite out of him. He still had that smile on, and he was trying to mouth something. His voice didn’t seem to be working anymore. The light was a beautiful green all of a sudden before it faded, and Jakey with it, his shape disappearing into the darkness. Tommy did not sleep that night. When Joel asked him what had kept him up, he just shrugged._

_That day, he found a journal in one of those book stores they looted for entertainment (nudie mags), one with a pen included. The journal was bright green. He didn’t find a thing to write in it for ages, it felt like, until all he could do was write. He wrote it in the Hunters, after the Hunters when it was just the two of them again, when he was on his own, when he met Maria and came to Jackson and stayed. Then came the day he wanted to give it to Joel, the day he hesitated, and then the day when he would never be able to have him read it again._

_It lay in a shelf just by the side of his bed, and he called it the Necrochronicle (bit of a mouthful, Maria had said), for it was about the alive dead. Most of the entries went like “Saw something like a ghost at 7, I dunno”, but some of them – some of them charted things he still didn’t understand, though he had tried to for a long time. Most of the other people, even Joel, gave him shit whenever he tried to tell them about anything – though Joel, he knew, had to know better._

It was deep in the night now, the lamps of Jackson casting pale shadows across the room. He folded the journal back up and put it into the shelf of what he liked to call his study. Maria usually made him refer to it as the “attic”, for reasons of that being “factually correct” and “actually true”, but then again, she had stopped trying to correct him most of the time, now deciding to roll her eyes. He leaned back and recalled the last night – one of their windows had blown open, and a chill had entered the room, after which they had cuddled closer together, and holding her in his arms, the strong woman curling against him for warmth and safety, he felt as if Joel lived next-door, and they would go fishing tomorrow with him and Ellie. Or Sarah. If Joel was waiting in the beyond – if, by some miracle, he hadn’t been sent straight to hell for making the decisions he made before he met Ellie – who was he waiting for? Tommy breathed a loud sigh. When had life become so complicated? Or rather – why hadn’t the savage world around them made their feelings easier to navigate? As soon as he got to too much thinking, his mind inevitably went back to Jakey. He got up. Ellie and Jessie must’ve been back by now. He oughta check up on her, see how her sortie went.

He learned the word sortie from Metal Gear Solid for the PS2, which he played when it was his turn to get one of the consoles for a week.

The moment he walked out, he saw a commotion forming in the square. There were people around Ellie, welcoming her pack, extending a pat on the shoulder. Even Seth was there, trying his best to make amends for a bad moment that seemed to be getting worse by the hour. He had, unexpectedly, ruined one of the last few quiet moments Ellie and Joel could’ve had together. Tommy knew it weighed on his mind from their group therapy sessions.

Tommy approached her. She seemed even more distraught than usual. And hungry. With Jesse nowhere around.

“Hey Ellie”, he said, approaching her through the small crowd that dispersed as soon as he came.

“That’s, uh, that’s my name”, Ellie said. She looked Tommy up and down. “And you are?”

“Good to see you’re in good humour”, Tommy said. “Where’s Jesse, anyway?”

“Oh, he already went to Dina.”

“Oh, really? Are they good? I heard some screaming coming from their house last time I walked by. Could be anything, I know, but I'm worried sometimes.”

“Oh, you know. Teens. Always up to… something.”

Tommy focused Ellie with razor-sharp eyes, a glare that made her shrink a little before she remembered she could tear him limb from limb if she wanted to. But there were others around – they would scarcely be able to fend off her largest forms, but then again, some of them might have stakes lying around. And she could never be sure Marceline wasn’t just around the corner.

“So”, Tommy said, “you good?”

“Me? Yes, I’m good – I’m great, actually. Just hungry. Can I come over to your place for dinner?”

“Uh, yeah. Just walk on ahead. You know where it is.”

“You’re gonna have to let me in, though.”

“Maria can let you in, she’s inside, Ellie. Ellie, I just feel like there’s something off about you. Did anything happen while you two were gone?”

“Uh, no. Nothing special. The usual stuff. Couple of, uh…” She looked as if she were trying to remember the correct term at a physics exam. “Clickers!”, she said.

“Yeah, that sure is what we call those.”

There was a glimmer in her eye that made him think, just for a moment, that this wasn’t Ellie. It was her hair, it was her outfit – even though those boots she wore looked a bit unfamiliar – but her eyes told a whole different story. Tommy hated to admit it, but it was weird to see her so apparently curious about her surroundings without the weight of crushing guilt and pain pulling her down.

From the corner of his eye, Tommy saw a familiar shade of light brown jacket, dark hair moving towards them. He turned to Dina. She was alone.

“Yo, Dina”, he said, “Ellie’s back!”

“Oh!”, Dina yelled. “Hi, Ellie! Where’s Jessie?”

Tommy felt it. He felt it in the air long before the gears in his head had finished turning. Ellie darted over to Dina with incredible speed. A moment later, Tommy saw Dina hesitantly pointing in the direction of his house, and then Ellie seemed to turn into a girl-shaped streak across the street, turning into a little side alley at the end of which he knew she would reach Maria.

Tommy reached Dina in a sprint. This was turning ugly and weird really fast, and he still had no idea what was going on, only that something was happening. He remembered his journal for a split-second – it almost seemed to be calling out to him.

“Dina, what did you tell her?”

Dina looked at him bewildered. “She – she just asked me where your house was. But why would she do that?”

“I have no fucking idea. Grab a shotgun somewhere and come to my house.”

Tommy ran as well as he could. At the house, Ellie and Maria were standing in the doorway. Soon as Ellie saw him, her entire demanour changed from sweet relaxation to anxious waiting. She even started jumping from one foot to the other.

“Can I come in now?”, he heard her say.

“Maria n-!”

“Yeah”, Maria said, looking at Tommy with a confused, even somewhat annoyed expression, “sure, come in.”

 _Ellie_ flashed him a grin. “You fools!”, she said with a voice that was definitely not her own. With a yell, her entire body turned into a heaving mess of black with a large arm that pulled Maria inside. The door closed and shone a bright violet. Tommy hammered his fists against the wood, but it wouldn’t budge. Nothing about it moved, only small violet shockwaves ran along the length of hit in the rhythm of his hit.

“Let her go!”, he said. “Let her go, you bastard!”

“Tommy!”, Maria screamed until she couldn’t anymore. A hand was covering her mouth. She bit into it, but it didn’t move.

“Ah, ah, ah, Thomas”, _it_ said, “you be quiet out there. We’re gonna have some fun.”

Tommy looked through the window. _It_ had turned into a sort of large bat-like creature, with frayed wings and dark fur. In its four hands, it held Maria in a gridlock that kept her from moving as _it_ quickly slithered up the stairs with her, into the darkness of the upper floor.

“Tommy!”, Dina shouted. She threw a shotgun at him while a crowd slowly formed around the house. Some pulled their guns.

“Wait”, Tommy said, “shoot it if it goes outside. I’m going in.”

“Moment”, Dina said, “take these bullets, too.” She gave six bullets he quickly stuffed into his pocket.

He shot at the window. It broke, nothing violet to defend it. Not paying too much attention to the glass grabbing at him, he moved through it and landed in his living room, only the shadows of the people outside there to keep him company. He motioned for them to be quiet. There were about four or five people there, Dina included, and they all shut up immediately. It was quiet. Then, a thump on the roof. Had _it_ brought Maria up there? Was it a new kind of infected? Tommy stopped thinking. He felt this house in his bones, every room, every part of its atmosphere. He moved up. No flashlight until he needed it.

Upstairs, something slithered out of view. Into their bedroom. He readied his shotgun. There was some comfort to knowing he would, if he were to, die in a home where he had spent a considerable amount of time being content. But not enough comfort not to load the bullets into his shotgun and prepare himself for anything that might be in there. He turned on his flashlight. Maria was lying in bed, her body seemingly unharmed - no blood, no nothing. Then, he looked up. Fangs over fangs over fangs and fur that melted into the darkness lunged at him. He took a step back, but felt _it_ grab at him with its claws, which tore holes through his clothes and burned his skin. He took aim, but _it_ disappeared into the dark again. Tommy closed his eyes. He stepped back into the corridor to put some distance between him and the doorframe, and then he heard it moving above, took aim, and fired. The rounds pierced fur, but not skin. _It_ hissed. He readied the shotgun again.

"What the fuck even are you?", he asked. 

_It_ broke into a toothy smile. Tommy noticed something that looked like a large moustache above its lips. Whatever was going on, he could only hope to get a couple more shots off before it was over, and also hope the people outside would at least have the decency to throw grenades inside once they could be sure both him and Maria were dead. 

A gun pressed up against its temple. Maria pulled the trigger in the moment _it_ moved, and a fang went flying. 

"You idiot! Do you know how long that takes to regrow?" _, it_ said. Maria readied her revolver. "Then you better have finished me off."

"You're both dead and you know it."

Tommy readied his shotgun. Maria cocked the revolver. They didn't look at each other. They didn't need to.

"Yeah", he said, "but this is still gonna hurt."

Two figures who had just arrived outside, dropping off a third, heard only the sound of hissing, yelling and gunshots. Marceline grabbed Ellie and they went through the window on the upper floor, glass cutting through Ellie's scalp just enough to draw blood. She got up, a gun in her good hand, a stake at her side, while Marceline stormed inside the eerily quiet room. There was a fight inside, one where things or people were thrown around the room, where she heard Marceline scream, followed by the sound of a hurt animal. Ellie moved, each footstep careful not to give away too much about how heavy she was or that she was coming at all. She peered inside. The flashlight lay on the ground, Tommy and Maria on top of each other, half on the bed, half off it, the creature cowering in a corner.

"Hierophant", Marceline said. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Marceline", he said. "Fuck you."

"Language!", she said. She looked over at Tommy and Maria. Ellie's eyes went wide.

"What did you do to them?", Ellie asked.

HIerophant looked at her. He was now not a creature of night and horror, but looked just like the middle-aged man who had attacked her in the basement. Only his teeth were still razor-sharp, and his eyes dead. He laughed, then coughed. "If I had just a little more time, it would've been more. People really like you around here. The guy especially. _Ellie._ "

Her name sounded twisted.

"What are you doing here?", Marceline asked. 

"Are you repaying his gift this way?"

"Shut up."

"He made you one of ours. After you had already killed most of us. After you had killed him, for crying out loud. Tell me - why am I still alive?"

"Because a person I care about asked me to try to talk to you. To make you understand."

"Who? Hunson?"

"Yup."

"Darn it. Golf-playing son of a gun. Hate him."

"It's mutual, but he respects your mojo."

Tommy groaned.

"But it's too late now, Hierophant", she said. "Say hi to the Vampire King for me, will ya?"

"You are a despicable, foul, ratched piece of work, Marceline. End it."

"Don't you have to invite the stake inside?"

"I'll pretend I didn't h-"

Marceline rammed a stake through Hierophant's heart. 

Ellie quickly approached Maria and Tommy. She turned on the light. There was blood. So much. 

"We need to get them to our hospital station", she said.

"On it, just a sec", Marceline said. 

Hierophant's corpse turned into dust that looked, at least to Ellie, a lot like spores, and she watched in awe and a bit of horror as Marceline absorbed it. She took off her headgear, mask and scarf and shot her a smile. 

"That makes one", she said.

Ellie saw two bite marks by her neck.

But before she could say anything, Marceline had lifted Tommy onto her shoulder and gestured for Ellie to try to carry the smaller Maria. 

Questions among questions above questions with questions on the side, Ellie thought. But for the first time since entering the basement with "Jessie", she breathed a sigh of relief. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some more for all those hungry and interested.


	7. Magic

It had come as a revelation to him – the memory of it, the It itself, had been lost a long time ago. But when he had a run-in with a bloater who decimated the survivors around him and hurried into a forest to hide, the vision came with the might of a thunderstorm, impossible to ignore, tangible – real.

He was walking through the woods, hungry and desolate, afraid any sound might be campers who would kill him for food, or infected who would feed on him to kill. The moon had risen a bloody red that night, and with his bare eyes, he made out Mars in the sky. In the strange way planets and stars have for generations, it felt both distant and familiar, unreachable but still part of him. But this went deeper. It went into realms none of his appreciation for the night sky had ever entered. It felt almost like...

_Home._

The thought was as real as an ice cream truck after the fall of civilised society – true, but unrecognisable. In a way, he felt as if his entire life had led him to this discovery about himself. And it had, just as it would lead him to all the next moments. There were shivers up his spine, from its very end to the top of his head, hidden behind a tall hat he had found in a costume shop. There was darkness around him, and all which was not lit by the moon lay still in the cool air of the night.

In the forest he sat down, certain that he would be safe in the morning. He awoke, his back in pain, to the song of birds by a nearby stream, where he caught, with some efforts, and strangled a rabbit he then cooked on a makeshift fire. The meat filled him with ideas.

He felt power like never before that night, hiding just beneath the surface of what he knew about himself, revealing layers upon layers of more thought. He reached for some more of the meat, only to find that it was already in his hand. In his mind was a fire, and it was blazing, growing hotter by the second. The meat in his hand, however, was not. It was cold.

He cast it away again. It returned to his hand as soon as he willed it.

With trepidation, he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was black from heat, boiled and burned from the inside. He felt a part of his soul leave him – at least it appeared so. He started panting. His breathing was heavy. 

“Magic?”, he said, out loud. The birds looked up at the strange sound, then continued drinking from the stream and picking the ground for worms. 

His voice had usually been described as annoying by the people he travelled with, sometimes even as grating. It jumped up and down without his willing so, always seeming just a bit goofy. In the quiet of the forest, it didn’t sound like anything if it was even there, audible above the deep silence of leaves rustling and flowers bobbing in the wind. The stream muffled the noises of his getting up.

“Marbles”, he said then. His wife. No. "Marfles." No, that definitely wasn't it. "Martles?", he asked the air. He heard it say no. "Alright, then. Margles!"

It came back. All of it.

Mars. His past. His view of Earth. His work in protecting others. 

**Golb.**

He ran to the nearest building, a small hut that looked as if somebody had hidden in it just a short while ago. As expected, there was an infected person inside. He killed them by ramming their head against the wall. In an effort to understand, he ripped their skin open with his fingernails and let the blood hang in the air. He looked at it as closely as he could without the equipment he used to have, and found that his hastily formed hypothesis had been correct. That meant there was work to do, and even more that could be achieved through it.

The Magic Man gathered the few belongings he could find in the hut, an axe chief among them, right after a water bottle. He felt the magic taking too much out of him, with how long he had wrongly believed his life to have been entirely devoid of it. He took the water bottle, brought it back to the stream and saw the birds singing. He drank. Strength returned to him, as did vigour. The birds had taken flight.

With a wave of his hand, one of the birds turned inside out. He felt a sharp pain in his fingers as the bird dropped to the ground. This would take work, and this would take time.

What luck, then, that he knew just where to go to get what he needed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this one, we welcome a familiar face.


	8. Books I

The dust had settled. Whatever _it_ had been, it was dead now, and there was a different kind of work to be done. Dina helped Jesse stand. He was still holding on to the Marceline’s weird bag of blood when both her and Ellie walked out of the building, Marceline (back in her dark gear) carrying Tommy, Ellie helping a freshly conscious Maria walk on her feet.

“Ellie”, Maria whispered so only Ellie could hear, “that wasn’t anyone infected, right?”

Ellie shook her head.

“Then what was it?”

“Vampire.”

“You’re joking. Stop.”

“It, uh. I guess I need an explanation myself.” Ellie looked at her hand. The wound seemed to be closing around itself, but instead of making her feel better, the pain seemed to grow with every passing minute. She needed to get it looked at, fast.

Even if it meant she’d lose it. And never play guitar again. Lose the last thing that connected her to J-

“What the fuck happened in there?”, Dina asked.

Ellie looked at Dina. She was worried, glad that they had made it out alive, confused. Ellie noticed a large number of expressions around them mirroring Dina’s. “I have no idea. We need to get these guys to the hospital though.”

Marceline kept walking. “Fast. Where is it?”

“Let’s all go together”, Dina said, looking to Jesse to see whether he could walk normally. He did, but very slowly.

“Too slow”, Marceline said. “Ellie, point me to where we need to go.”

“It’s got a big red cross on it and it’s like, a couple of buildings further over there”, Ellie said. “It’s pretty basic far as hospitals go.”

Marceline nodded and flew off. There was a gasp among those who had not seen her arrive. “Fuck”, Maria said, “she can fly? Am I seeing this right?”

“That’s kinda awesome”, Dina said slowly.

“You don’t understand”, Maria answered. She grunted a little as Ellie steadied her. “She’s gonna be trouble. She saved us now, but, you know, people like that – they always have something comin’ after them.”

“How many flying people have you met, Maria?”, Jesse asked her. She gave him a stern look.

“None. But Tommy should know something about this.” She laughed. “Motherfucker. He’s gonna have a field day.”

Marceline started looking less like a majestic flying woman and more like a seagull lost on the way to port. She moved rather erratically into different directions before she disappeared from view, sauntering vaguely downwards. Soon, Ellie heard a loud crash. Maria gave her a weary look.

“Whatever that was”, she said, “you better go check, and you two got a whole lot of explainin’ to do.”

She motioned for one of the men around her to take Ellie’s place while the girl left. Ellie handed Maria over to a burly-looking new arrival – they seemed to be getting those quite a bit recently. Ellie sometimes wondered whether they noticed the gaping hole Joel had left in their middle, or whether Jackson was just Jackson, with or without him. The thought made her want to throw up.

She arrived in front of the hospital – the cross had seen better days while the lights inside the rooms always seemed to be on except in the deepest night – to see Tommy being lifted onto a stretcher, but Marceline laying face-down in the snow, grunting at every attempt to lift her.

“I’m fine”, she said through what sounded like snow, cloth and gritted teeth.

Ellie approached her, her hand aching and pulsing. She wondered if she would ever make full use of it again, really – there might be some damage done there she didn’t yet understand. All she knew was that moving her fingers was growing more difficult by the minute. Around her and Marceline, a crowd was forming, made up of the usual onlookers, of children who thought maybe Santa had come (though most parents had opted out of promising presents at all, even for birthdays), and Seth, hanging around somewhere in the back. Ellie grimaced. Not him. She turned to Marceline, who had apparently found a comfortable spot to rest in the fake light of the hospital entry area, in the snow right in front of the actual building. It rose before them like a grey hut grown out of proportion. Really, that’s what it was – an old building that had been added to with haphazardly designed and isolated rooms by their architect, Kim Kil Whan. He was busy drawing something else up, no doubt – he’d dreamt of going into real estate before hell came down, but there was no use for that now.

“You good down there?”

Marceline turned around, moving the snow around her while she came to lie on her back. She huffed and puffed and spit out a couple of snowflakes that had settled on her dark red lips. Her mask had ridden up, exposing her pale skin.

“I’m perfect”, she said, “just really tired.”

“Need a bed to go to sleep?”

“Nah, it’s night out now, I need to send word to my folks I’m okay. They’ll be worried.”

“Your mom and dad?”

“Nah. I don’t know where those are. I don’t think my mom’s alive”, Marceline said as she started getting up. It seemed to be a lot of effort on her part, though she was doing her best to hide it. She took off her mask, which had also covered her head, and her black hair freed itself of its chains. It was long and looked as if she took little care of it – it seemed thick and sticky with something that wasn’t quite sweat, though Ellie couldn’t tell what it was.

In the light of the hospital, her skin was still the same kind of grey it had been in the house where she found Ellie, or on the way here – it seemed as if light didn’t make it look different.

Marceline took Ellie’s hand, the one that had been hurt by the dead Hierophant.

“The bastard bit you here”, she said, grimacing herself, “this ain’t good.”

“I’m – uh.” Ellie was just about to say she was immune, but what felt like the ghost of a hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“We ought to get you checked out”, Marceline said. “I’ll wait in the waiting area. Let’s go.”

“Well”, Ellie said, “this doesn’t bode well for my guitar career, now does it?”

“Uh-huh”, Marceline said. She looked around, her eyes adjusting to the crowd of people around them, watching Marceline with more than a little awe, all while still being wary of the newcomer. And then – she had flown.

“Mom”, one of the smaller girls asked a woman, “did she just fly?”

“Hush”, she said, “we don’t know what she can do to us.”

Marceline shrugged. “J’m pretty cool, actually.”

“Can you fly again?”, the girl said, her mother barely keeping her from running up to Marceline. Ellie saw the others approaching behind the crowd. And then she saw Seth in it again. She didn’t quite know what the look in his eyes was trying to tell her – that he had warned Jackson about her, and that she was now conferring openly with demons, with the pale, ashen-skin forces of hell? Or was it some sort of respect because she was standing next to someone who looked even weirder than she did?

“We’re going into the hospital because we just saved your people’s butt”, Marceline then said, loudly. “Anyone got a problem with that?”

The crowd shrugged. In a world of Clickers and Bloaters, able-to-talk Marceline, her floating powers notwithstanding, seemed the lesser of five evils. A couple of people moved aside to let Maria, Dina and Jesse pass through, along with those who helped them walk.

Inside the hospital, Marceline stayed in the waiting area, which was really just a bunch of chairs organised around wherever they could fit tables. There were other people there, but they were too worried about their loved ones to really notice anything off about her. She sat down as Ellie was quickly hurried away, and soon fell into a slumber. Ellie was ushered through a number of rooms before someone could take a good look at her hand. That someone was Penelope, and though she didn’t know it yet, Ellie walking into the hospital would confirm something for her that she had waited on for almost 20 years. The volume entrusted to Penelope by the last real witch of Missouri had been lost a long time ago, left behind while escaping a pack of runners in the forests of the Bridger-Taton, but its contests remained pressed into her brain, like living memories of a time about to rise again.

***

Before society broke into pieces, its wounds not only revealed, but made to cover it whole, Penelope had been a good Christian girl studying to be a doctor for reasons of ideology, not prestige or parents breathing down her backs as some others around her had been. She came from a town in the middle of nowhere that still had a small German community, made up of settlers who had come to America in the 1900s. Families stayed close, and barely anyone ever left – if they did, they never came back. In her childhood, she had seen her grandmother – who had sung the songs of Leonard Cohen to her in a breathy whisper when they were alone and Penelope wanted to cry – go down in the flames of cancer, the disease ravaging her body like a hurricane tears apart a wooden house. What had astounded her at the time was the strength of the people cleaning out her shit in the hospice, feeding her when she was too tired to move and treating her with such dignity when she looked, to Penelope, like a soul shackled to earth in a broken body. Through the nurses and doctors, Penelope saw that her grandmother was a person even in the utter depth of despair, even when holding her crying mother, something no girl of fourteen should have to do.

When the infection came, which happened two years later, after her grandfather’s broken heart had unexpectedly followed his wife into whatever afterlife there was, her father, her mother and her stayed at a hospital which had been reinforced by more military than she had ever seen. As soon as she saw a nurse, or a doctor, or anyone – she said “Let me help.” It was her war cry. It was a rallying versus everything, a rage against. The doctors took her in, gave her scrubs and went through as many anatomical details with her as they could. Doctor Brigitte Blocksberg oftentimes skipped meals to talk to Penelope in her office, which had been repurposed into a home for three families, all stacked on top of each other. In the night, when there were gunshots outside the perimeter and Penelope knew her parents were holding each other, promising that everything would be alright, she listened to Brigitte Blocksberg and sketched bodies in her journal. One night, when silence had fallen, Dr. Blocksberg closed the door and made sure the other people in the room were fast asleep. She sat down across from Penelope, turned their lamp off and lit three candles in the dim light coming from searchlights outside.

“I need to pass this on to someone”, she had said then, “in case I don’t make it out of here.”

“Doctor?”, Penelope said. The doctor shushed her. “Doctor”, she whispered, “what are you talking about? We’re safe in here.”

“Oh, Penny”, Dr. Blocksberg shook her head, “we will never be safe again.”

She grabbed a small volume that she had carried in her breast pocket. It was about as large as a pocket bible. With no noise at all, she put it on the table before Penelope. On it, there was a picture of a man with glasses and stubble looking to the right. It was bound in dark leather. There were two letters on it – H. A.

“H. A.?”

“Hunson Abadeer”, Dr. Blocksberg said. They heard a loud noise outside, like a wild animal running towards its prey, before silenced gunshots brought it down.

“Oh Lord”, Penelope said, “are they this close?”

“They are”, Dr. Blocksberg said. She took off her glasses. “Have you ever heard of the Nightosphere, Penelope?”

“What? I haven’t, no. Is that – is that some sort of satanic thing? If so I – I need to go.”

“No, at least, not quite. We live in a time without magic, so this won’t do you any good, really.”

“Dr. Blocksberg, what are you talking about? I think you need to get some sleep.”

The doctor looked at Penelope. She was genuinely worried about the older woman. It would’ve been adorable if it wasn’t such a terrible waste.

“Penelope”, she said then, “you need to know this. You can’t speak of it to anyone – not even mommy and daddy. Unless you feel you have to – then go ahead. I won’t be mad, I promise.”

“O-okay.”

“There is more to our lives than you know. It’s scary sometimes, but I really do believe knowledge will set you free. I was taught by my professor, and as long as I can, I shall teach you. You know vampires, mages, beings made of fire?

“I once saw a Harry Potter film when my mom wasn’t looking. Don’t tell her, please. She’d ground me. If she, uh, if she could, I mean.”

“Oh, Penelope. It’s different. Many thousands of years ago, a comet…”

A catalyst comet is what it was called – at least in the book Penelope read whenever she had a moment of time without panicking. The soldiers were preparing to move them to a Quarantine Zone somewhere else, where they said everyone would get a room, normal plumbing, and food every day. They shot a man she had spoken to just a couple of days ago before her eyes for leaving the hospital at night and refusing to take his clothes off to be inspected for bites. She continued reading in the evening after crying her eyes out in one of the bathrooms, the book seemingly calling out to her between the tears.

Comets reappeared throughout the history of the earth, always bringing with them a factor of change. Thousands, no – millions of years ago, a number of people – no, _Elementals_ – banded together to stop one of them, but it failed, instead creating an artifact of magical properties so strong it continued to reverberate throughout history.

**_The Crown._ **

Hunson Abadeer was ruler of the Nightosphere, an eternal Prince of Darkness who sometimes – Penelope tried to make out the word – cadoodled with humans. Penelope would have to ask Dr. Blocksberg what that meant. There was also a section that had lived through a number of coffee stains, underlinings and sweating hands – the one on ages of magic. The current millennium – which one was that, exactly? – was an age without magic, as far as Penelope could tell. However – and this part of the book seemed to cry out with some sort of longing – magic could return at any time. It could be a comet, a plague or an event of cosmic significance that would cause its return.

Dr. Blocksberg introduced her to other things. She gave her a tour of the world in terms of its hidden histories – and explained, in detail that Penelope did not understand, how the world was made up of the elements of Fire, Ice, Candy and Slime. On the table, she organised a lollipop, some slime she found in the basement, a couple of ice cubes and a lit candle into a circle. Dr. Blocksberg drew the happy face beneath it again, and as soon as both her and Penelope dropped some blood into the circle, the objects combined into a miniature of earth before falling apart into dirt. The family behind them was having the best sleep of their lives at the time. Penelope wondered if Dr. Blocksberg mixed some sleeping pills into their food, knowing they would hold their nightly rituals. 

“So”, Dr. Blocksberg said, “you see now?”

Penelope swallowed. She grabbed the cross hanging around her neck, a sterling silver gift given to her by her grandmother. She always found Jesus on in to look unbearably sad, almost as if he really did know everything going on around him, but had do endure it for a reason beyond her understanding. “And this?”

Dr. Blocksberg gave her a long look. “No reason not to”, she said then, slowly, sure to carefully study the girl's face.

Penelope breathed an audible sigh of relief. Then, she broke down crying. It came like an avalanche, quickly moved through her belly, crawled up her spine and arrived at her face, where a flood of tears finally freed itself from the fear of being seen by her parents, who would tell her to have faith in God and stop crying while they themselves despaired. Or by the other people in the hospital, who were always annoyed whenever somebody started having fits of hysteria around them. As if those were more dangerous than what was waiting outside.

“Hey”, the doctor said, “are you okay? Penelope?"

Penelope nodded while crying.

“It’s just – it’s just so much at once. I can’t – I really can’t.”

She heard the doctor get up and waited for some reprimanding, the kind she was used to from home, though her parents had never gotten physical. But Dr. Blocksberg bent down and hugged her. Her parents didn’t do that too often anymore, either.

“Hush”, the doctor said, her hair smelling sweat, disinfectant and long nights, “you’ll be fine. Somehow.”

Penelope couldn’t stop crying. She didn’t until her parents walked in, saw the ritual table and the doctor hugging her, told the authorities about what they thought was going and the doctor was not allowed to see the girl again – to keep morale high, they said. Instead of keeping her with the regulars, Dr. Blocksberg was ordered to experiment on the infected – to find out what made them tick, how the sickness progressed, what changed in their blood and body structure.

There was one more message from Dr. Blocksberg Penelope received before she and her parents left for the QZ that was to be the last place her parents would draw breath. It came in an envelope that she had found in her bag, though she never remembered putting it somewhere where it wasn’t in full view of _someone_ for even a minute. The envelope had _P. from Dr. B._ written on its back, and once she opened it, she found a hospital greeting card. There was a picture of the hospital in better days on it, the large trees in front of it in full view, not obscured by tanks and SUVs. Penelope turned it around.

_Keep healing. Stay true. To yourself, and to others. Have faith._

_Dr. B._

_P.S.: The Infected are Agents of Chaos. It is in their blood._

While travelling, Penelope found a moment when most people around her were either sleeping or crying to open the book, for which she had found a fitting, quasi-self-help cover (How to retrace your steps in life with Peter Endelton) in the library. She flipped over to the pages on Chaos. And she would never forget the image of its maker, the way it looked in the dim lights coming from the front of their vehicles and the way its eyes seemed to sparkle. She traced the letters. G. O. L. B.

She closed the book. Her parents had talked to her at length about the crazy-talk the doctor had subjected her too, and she decided to get some sleep instead. Nevertheless, she kept the book close to her cross, and even after it was lost, she felt as if she could remember every single page. In her sleep, she was followed by visions of Elementals, of Hunson Abadeer (who seemed more handsome in her dreams than he actually was) and Dr. Blocksberg hugging her close, whispering hope into her ear. "Keep healing", she whispered while turning. She would. For as long as she had to - and longer. 

Ellie stepped into the hospital room with a fresh vampire bite pulsing across her hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After meeting a familiar face, let's welcome a new one.
> 
> Consider this longer chapter a bit of an effort to make this new year more interesting, all troubles outside notwithstanding. Take care of yourselves, stay safe.


End file.
